article Published October 6, 2026 By Miguel Guhlin Privacy & Security

Wiping Old Equipment's Hard Drives

Need to wipe an old hard drive or USB stick? Here's one approach.

The short version

Need to wipe an old hard drive or USB stick? Here's one approach.

Everyone ends up with old equipment, and you ask yourself, “How do I securely wipe the hard drive (HDD) or sanitize the SDD so that no one can swipe info from it?” It’s a question I’ve had to answer and take action on several times over the course of my career. While it’s easy to say, “Drill the hard drive so the data is totally unrecoverable,” that’s not always an option for some folks. Neither is taking the HDD/SDD into your backyard and putting holes the best approach.

Try ShredOS

That’s why I was pleased to see this utility that will get the job done. To capture the big picture process, I went ahead and got ChatGPT to make an infographic out of it that I could share with colleagues:

Infographic about ShredOS and how to use it

You might also find these NIST standards useful.

Where To Get ShredOS

To download ShredOS, don’t go to the website. The links there all redirect to browser-extension downloads, which are suspicious. Instead, go to GitHub links below.

IMG Download: Get ShredOS via GitHub (See instructions at the bottom of this blog entry for GNU/Linux .img write to USB stick). ISO Download: Get ShredOS ISO version (You can use a tool like Rufus to put this on a flash drive and boot up).

An Overview

Media	What I’d use	Recommended method
🖴 Traditional HDD	ShredOS / nwipe	One complete overwrite + verification
🖴 Multiple old HDDs	ShredOS / nwipe	Wipe drives simultaneously; save certificates
💾 USB flash drive	ShredOS / nwipe	Overwrite + verify for ordinary reuse, with caveat below
⚡ SATA SSD	ATA Sanitize/Secure Erase via ShredOS tools	Prefer drive’s hardware sanitize command
⚡ NVMe SSD	nvme-cli	NVMe Block Erase or Cryptographic Erase
🔒 Highly sensitive flash/SSD	Sanitize command or physical destruction	Don’t rely solely on overwriting

Instructions to Write .img File to USB Stick on Linux

1. Find the USB device

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,TRAN,MOUNTPOINTS

2. Unmount the USB partitions

Replace /dev/sdX with your USB device, such as /dev/sdb

sudo umount /dev/sdX*

3. Go to the folder containing the .img file

cd ~/Downloads

4. Confirm the image filename

ls -lh *.img

5. Write the image to the USB

Replace filename.img and /dev/sdX with the correct values sudo dd if=filename.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

Example:

sudo dd if=shredos-2025.11_31_x86-64_v0.42_20260716.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

6. Flush any remaining writes

sync

7. Verify the USB layout

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,LABEL,MODEL

8. Safely eject the USB

sudo eject /dev/sdX

Bonus Material

Use DD command when booting off a flash drive

Here’s another alternative to ShredOS…

1. Identify the drive

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,TRAN,MOUNTPOINTS

Example target:

/dev/sda

Use the WHOLE DRIVE (/dev/sda), not a partition (/dev/sda1)

2. Unmount any mounted partitions on the target drive

sudo umount /dev/sda*

3. Wipe the entire HDD with zeros

sudo dd if=/dev/zero
of=/dev/sda
bs=16M
status=progress
conv=fsync

4. Flush writes